Corvis Eralith
The world contracted, then exploded into a symphony of muted light and amplified sensation. Inside Barbarossa's cockpit, the air—recycled by wind attuned runes—hummed with latent power, thick with the scent of bleeding from Sylvia's core and the faint, clean tang of treated leather and cold steel.
My body was cradled, almost swallowed, by the reinforced seat, limbs extending into articulated braces connected to the exoform's rudimentary control levers. It wasn't a vehicle's cabin; it was the heart of a weapon. A five-meter-tall monument to defiance, forged in secrecy and desperation.
"Saying that as a vehicle the Barbarossa is good is an insult," Romulos's voice slithered directly into my consciousness, bypassing ears, a parasite in the sanctum of my own skull.
It's not meant to be a vehicle, I shot back, the mental retort sharp, defensive. It's a weapon. My weapon. The distinction felt vital, sacred. Outside, through the layered perception of the Dark Visor, the world unfolded in a breathtaking, unnerving panorama.
The mountaintop plateau stretched beneath a vast, indifferent sky, Berna a looming, hazel monolith facing me. The Dark Visor wasn't just a glass dome; it was a magical sensorium, translating ambient mana into shifting hues, revealing currents invisible to the naked eye.
I willed the view, and it flowed seamlessly—the craggy peak far behind me, the dizzying drop to the valleys below, the intricate weave of wind mana whistling past Berna's ears. It granted god-like awareness, yet the thick, darkened dome pressing close also felt like a prison wall, separating me utterly. Encased. Isolated.
"How are you going to speak with the bear?" Romulos's question was a needle pricking the bubble of focus. Right. No speakers. No external voice. Another consequence of my frantic, isolated construction.
Gestures, I thought, the answer feeling woefully inadequate. A pang of loneliness, sharp and unexpected, cut through the technical fervor.
With a deep breath, I activated Beyond the Meta. The vibrant plateau dissolved into stark greyscale, the world defined solely by the pulsing rivers of mana. Against the Tragedy flared on my forearm, a familiar anchor.
Then, I reached deeper, not with my hands, but with my will. I connected to the torrential flow surging from Sylvia's core—a vast, deep, terrifyingly alien ocean of mana—channeling through the intricate network of mana wires woven into Barbarossa's very bones.
Unlike the Beast Corps in the novel, piloted by mundane engineers wrestling complex mechanics, I was a strange conduit, a mage hijacking an Asura's heart. Energy wasn't the problem; controlling the tsunami was.
My hands tightened on the levers. The massive, rune-etched arms of Barbarossa groaned, then lifted with startling smoothness. The protective glyphs flared to life, not with light visible outside, but as a deep, obsidian luminescence in my meta-sight, drinking the ambient glow.
The sensation was… profound. Not like moving my own limbs. Like willing a mountain to obey. A deep, resonant thrum vibrated through the cockpit frame, a physical echo of the power I commanded. It was intoxicating. Terrifying.
I focused on Berna, raising Barbarossa's massive, dark-palmed fist in a slow, deliberate gesture. Attack. The thought was clear, willing her to understand. Berna tilted her massive head, her green eyes narrowing.
I felt the flicker of her own potent mana signature through the Dark Visor—curiosity, a thread of wariness, and beneath it, a warmth that felt like home, even now. Jealousy? Perhaps. But loyalty won. She understood the significance of this moment, the blood and sweat and stolen weeks poured into the crimson giant.
She reared onto her hind legs, a smaller colossus now against Barbarossa's bulk, and swung a massive, clawed paw. Not a killing blow, not even her full strength, but enough to test.
"Try fist against fist," Romulos suggested, his tone laced with morbid curiosity.
I pushed the lever forward. Barbarossa's fist met Berna's paw. The impact shuddered through the exoform, transmitted through the braces into my own bones. A deep CLANG resonated, metallic and final.
The runes flared brighter, channelling Sylvia's power into reinforcement, absorption, kinetic dispersion to the ground and the air. Berna held her ground, but I felt the tremor through the exoform, saw the slight compression of the earth beneath her feet in my meta-vision. She wasn't straining, but she felt it. The raw, artificial power pushing back. Pride, fierce and unexpected, surged through me. It worked.
Hey Romulos, I sent the thought amidst the fading vibrations. Lately, has Windsom been spying? The question felt necessary, a reminder of the vipers circling me.
"Felt him once or twice," came the dismissive reply. "Probably lurking in his disgusting cat form, waiting for Grandfather's whistle like the obedient little hound he is." A phantom sneer accompanied the words. Good. Knowing the watcher was passive, for now, was a small relief.
"Now, let's try some maneuvers," I declared aloud, the sound muffled and strange inside the helmet. I gestured Berna back. Moving Barbarossa was… different. Straight-line speed, fueled by bursts of mana channeled to the leg pistons, was startling.
The plateau blurred momentarily as the exoform surged forward several meters, dust kicking up in its wake. But turning? Circling? Moving the limbs laterally? It was ponderous. Clumsy, even. The runes provided strength and reinforcement, not finesse.
The arms swept in wide, powerful arcs, the legs moved with the deliberate grace of a siege tower. It was functional, powerful in its brutality, but lacked the fluidity of a true combatant. A foundation, not a finished instrument. The weapons—the sword, the projector, the launcher—would define it in the future. But the core moved. It lived.
The thrill of control, the sheer presence of Barbarossa, was undeniable. A smile touched my lips, unbidden, as I considered the possibilities. If I had a Tempus Warp integrated… I could take it anywhere. Any fight. The thought crystallized into a darker impulse.
I need to test Accaron too. Properly. Against… live targets. The image surfaced, cold and clear: bandits. Scum preying on the weak. Disposable. A proving ground for my new decay vibration. The smile widened, edged with something unfamiliar, something sharp and hungry.
"Oh," Romulos purred, his voice a velvet-wrapped razor in my mind. "I like that tone."
The words hit like ice water. That predatory glee… was it mine? Or was it his, echoing through our shared psyche? Damn. Was I getting corrupted? He was the only voice, the only constant interaction, for months now. His cynicism, his casual brutality, his dark humor—had they seeped into my cracks?
"If being corrupted by yourself is a thing," Romulos chuckled, the sound devoid of humor, filled only with dark delight, "then yes, Corvis. Welcome to the delicious descent."
He wasn't just commenting; he was savoring my dawning horror, the realization that the line between survival and becoming something monstrous was terrifyingly thin, and I was dancing right on its edge, encased in crimson steel. The mountain wind howled outside, but inside the armored skull of Barbarossa, the only sound was the frantic pounding of my own heart and the ghostly laughter of that sardonic asura.
———
The air at the foothills tasted of dust, pine resin, and the sour tang of unwashed desperation. This no-man's-land, where the jagged teeth of the Grand Mountains met the whispering eaves of my Elenoir and bled into the Beast Glades' feral edge, was a festering wound.
A refuge for the dregs fleeing Tri-Union justice, parasites sustained by the shadowy patronage of human nobles who found profit in lawlessness. Perfect prey.
Too perfect. Today, their sanctuary was my proving ground. Accaron thirsted for their blood.
Arrows, crude fletchings whistling through the stale air, streaked towards me from the ragged palisade of the bandit camp. Not slavers, not poachers—just opportunistic leeches, evidenced by the rough-hewn cages holding a few battered figures, likely kidnapped adventurers awaiting ransom.
Disposable. Useful to their wicked minds.
I barely twitched. Beyond the Meta painted the world in stark greyscale rivers. My right hand, bearing the coiled rattlesnake of Accaron's defensive half, flared with controlled intent.
Mana, drawn sparingly but precisely from Against the Tragedy's reserves, vibrated outwards in an invisible, humming sphere. The arrows struck this resonant field not with impact, but with dissolution. Wood splintered into harmless dust mid-flight; iron arrowheads wobbled, lost momentum, and clattered uselessly to the rocky earth like discarded teeth.
Spells—crude bolts of fire and jagged shards of earth—fizzled against the barrier, their mana structures unraveling before they could kiss my skin. It was effortless. Cold. Efficient. A god dismissing gnats.
A bandit, stinking of cheap ale and fear-masked bravado, bellowed a challenge. He charged, a rust-pitted great axe held high, aiming for my legs—a coward's strike. My elbow snapped out, not a block, but a strike.
Against the Tragedy surged through the reinforced weave of my uniform, hardening flesh and fabric momentarily to tempered steel. The sickening crack of his forearm bone echoed louder than his choked scream. He crumpled, clutching the ruin of his limb, eyes wide with animal terror.
No hesitation. My left hand rose, the swarm-of-flies tattoo pulsing with sickly violet light. For the Catastrophe converted a thread of mana into pure, hungry decay.
Accaron's offensive resonance awoke, not a blade, but a localized field of entropic vibration centered on my palm. I didn't swing it; I pushed my hand towards his falling form.
The vibration hit his neck. Flesh didn't cut; it unraveled. Skin, muscle, sinew and bone—vibrating at discordant frequencies far beyond endurance. His head separated from his shoulders not with a spray, but with a wet, crumbling tear, collapsing into grisly pulp before it hit the ground.
The body followed, jerking once. The silence that followed was profound, broken only by the buzzing flies suddenly drawn to the feast.
"Beautiful!" Romulos's cheer was a serpent's hiss in my skull, dripping with perverse admiration. "A symphony of offense and defense! Elegant! Efficient! Beyond the Meta makes it poetry. I almost pity these wretches… almost." His glee was a physical pressure, a warm, seductive poison seeping into my veins.
And I… I felt nothing. No revulsion. No triumph. Only a chilling clarity. This sickening reflection of myself was right. The incoming war was a storm gathering on the horizon, a tempest that would drown the innocent.
These men? They were rot festering on the body of a continent already bleeding. By dying here, by my hand, they served a purpose greater than their pathetic lives ever could. They were practice. Fuel for the engine of war I was becoming. Sacrifices on the altar of survival for my family, my people. The logic was ice-cold, unassailable. Necessary.
Convincing Berna to stay back, a silent, disapproving shadow watching from the tree line, had been harder than any fight. Her low whine of protest still vibrated in my memory. But she obeyed. She understood the necessity, even as her loyal heart recoiled from the method. Not yet, dear friend. Not unless I fall.
I didn't fall. A bandit lunged, dagger glinting. My own dagger, cold steel drawn from a storage ring in a blink, met his throat. No flourish. No wasted motion. A sharp thrust upwards, a brutal twist, a sideways wrench. His gurgling cry died as his windpipe tore open, a crimson fountain soaking the dusty ground. The coppery stench joined the ozone and decay.
"Refining your style, Corvis," Romulos observed, a connoisseur appreciating a fine vintage. "Gone is that frantic, dirty scrapping against mana beasts. This is… surgical. Purposeful."
Silence, Romulos, I thought, the mental command laced with a weariness I wouldn't voice. These are insects. Scavengers. Not Retainers. Not Scythes. Not the real monsters. But the dismissal felt hollow, even to me. Each kill was a step down a path growing darker, steeper.
"So pessimistic!" Romulos whined theatrically. "We know Accaron defends. Now… show me its teeth. The decay. Let it sing." The hunger in his tone mirrored the cold knot tightening in my own gut. Not disgust. Anticipation.
With pleasure.
My dagger flew, a silver streak finding the thigh of a conjurer fumbling for a spell. His pained grunt was cut short as I closed the distance in a heartbeat. My left hand, still humming with the residue of decay, didn't strike. It plunged like a spear, or better like the stinger of a hornet.
Vibrating fingers, wreathed in entropic resonance, met his leather jerkin. The material offered no resistance; it simply ceased to be cohesive fiber where my fingers touched. Flesh parted like wet sand. Ribs vibrated, splintered, offered no barrier. My hand buried itself to the wrist in his chest cavity, vibrating destruction around the frantic, terrified organ within.
His eyes, wide with incomprehensible horror, locked onto mine through the dust and gore. Then they glazed over. The vibration ceased. I withdrew my hand, slick and steaming, leaving a ruin behind.
Good. The thought was cold, detached. Clinical. Now the next ones.
The camp descended into screaming chaos, but it sounded distant, muffled. The only things real were the hum of Accaron on my skin, the coppery reek of blood, the ozone tang of spent mana, and Romulos's dark, approving chuckle resonating in the hollow space where my conscience used to be.
The vibration in my left hand wasn't just decay; it was the tremor of my own soul, resonating towards a frequency I wasn't sure I could ever dial back.
The last bandit slumped, a final wet sigh escaping lips already cooling in the dust. Silence descended, thick and sudden, broken only by the frantic gasps of the freed prisoners and the distant cry of a carrion bird already scenting the feast.
The metallic tang of blood hung heavy, mixing with the ozone residue of my vibrations and the acrid fear-sweat of the captives. I wiped my dagger clean on a rag, the motion automatic, detached. The warmth of the blade felt alien against the chill settling in my own bones.
Berna remained where I had asked her, a brown silhouette against the tree line. Her gaze wasn't on the carnage, but fixed solely on me. Even from this distance, I felt the weight of it—not judgment, perhaps, but a profound, questioning stillness. The simple, unconditional loyalty I had always known in her green eyes was clouded by something new: wariness.
A silent echo of the question the freed emitter voiced, his voice trembling as he clutched his bruised ribs.
"Who are you?"
The words hung in the charged air. Who was I? Was I Prince Corvis Eralith, the fugitive betrayed by his own continent? The desperate survivor? The hermit who built crimson exoforms on mountaintops?
Or the thing that had just moved through these bandits like a scythe through rotten wheat, vibrating flesh into ruin without a flicker of remorse? None of those names fit the hollow space inside the steel-grey uniform.
"Outis," I replied, the name surfacing like driftwood from a sunken memory—a phantom from Earth, Odysseus's alias meaning 'Nobody.' It felt chillingly apt.
"Nobody... nobody at all." The lie tasted bitter, but it was the only shield I had left for him, and perhaps for myself. He didn't need the weight of knowing a prince hunted by a god and the kings of Dicathen had saved him. He just needed to be gone.
I had no potions, no bandages beyond my own meager supplies already depleted. My healing was violence, not restoration. "I wish you a safe journey," I offered, the words flat, inadequate. "Home, or wherever you find it."
He nodded, fear still stark in his eyes, and stumbled away with the others, casting fearful glances back at the armored figure and the silent, massive bear. The emptiness they left behind felt vast.
"So," Romulos's voice slithered into the quiet, devoid of the earlier battle-lust, replaced by a calculating curiosity. "What now? Back to the Beast Glades? Perhaps finally brave the whispers of the Relictombs?" He made it sound like choosing a holiday destination.
My gaze drifted past the smoldering camp remnants, past Berna's watchful form, towards the distant, brooding shadow of the Grand Mountains and the deeper wilderness where the Beast Glades began.
The memory hit me traumatically: gnolls erupting from stone, purple corruption, the terrifying void of yielding to Romulos. A cold sweat pricked my skin beneath the uniform. I swallowed, the sound loud in my own ears.
"Romulos," I asked, the vulnerability raw and terrifying in its honesty, "do you think I am strong enough?"
The fear was a living thing, coiling in my gut. Not just of death, but of the helplessness. The workshop beckoned, a sanctuary of steel and runes, of controlled experiments on deserving scum like bandits. Safe. Predictable. A place to hide from the gnawing terror the dungeons and my fate represented.
"Look at it rationally," Romulos countered, his tone annoyingly reasonable. "This skirmish? This is the first in your entire, rather fraught existence where you emerged entirely unscathed. Not a scratch. Accaron shielded you, your reflexes served you, Against the Tragedy fueled you, Beyond the Meta guided you. You were… efficient."
He paused, letting the implication sink in.
"And this name, 'Outis'... a name whispered only to the wind is meaningless. But used? It becomes armor. A persona. Besides," he added, a spectral shrug in his voice, "glance in a phantom mirror, Corvis. The boy prince who fled is gone. Your hair, the uniform, the marks on your skin, the bear's constant shadow… you are a stranger now. A ghost. Prince Corvis Eralith is gone."
He wasn't wrong. The reflection in still water at my feet showed someone hardened, sharpened by fear and fury. The gunmetal hair, longer, swept severely to one side. The intricate, power-thrumming tattoos visible on my hands. The stern, unfamiliar lines etched by stress around eyes that had seen too much death. The uniform, a stark, practical grey. And Berna, my unwavering, loyal anchor.
A spark, fragile but defiant, ignited against the cold fear. Not courage, but a grim determination born of having no better path.
"You're right," I stated, the words firmer than I felt. "We sweep the bandit nests along this border. From the Glades' edge to Sapin's frontier."
It wasn't just about loot or practice anymore. It was about proving I could walk, could fight, could survive outside the shadow of the mountains. It was about scraping together every ounce of false confidence before stepping back into the true crucible.
"Then," I said, turning my face towards the looming darkness of the Beast Glades, "we delve." The word tasted like cold iron and swallowed terror, but nobody had the luxury to be afraid.